Exclusive Interview w/ Designer Drugs

Published on April 20th, 2011

We recently had the chance to catch up with Michael Vincent Patrick, one half of the New York DJ/production duo Designer Drugs. Patrick, along with cohort Theodore Paul Nelson, has been keeping busy since the February release of their debut album Hardcore/Softcore. The two have been touring practically nonstop, and still managed to crank out another Datamix (#13!) in March. In our interview, we discussed DD’s Philly roots, some of the inspirations behind their music, and ch-ch-changes in the music world. Patrick also shared this great excerpt in regards to the best show he’d seen recently: “I went to this really sick dog show and someone had a dinosaur and it ate a poodle and no one freaked out it was weird.”

That about sums it up! Check out the full interview below, as well as an oldie but goodie DD remix. Finally, TNP writer Ty caught the guys down in Baltimore at Spring Massive last month, check out a review and some photos from that here.

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THE INTERVIEW

We understand that you guys are originally from PA, and actually lived in Philly for a while. We’re a Philly-based blog, so out of curiosity, where are you from, and what did you think of living in Philly?

Ah, Philly is the shit. I miss it sometimes. We are from central PA, Shamokin and Montandon.

You’ve done a huge number of remixes; do you have any personal favorites? Are there any upcoming remixes and/or collaborations that we can know about?

Klaxons, Thieves Like Us. We just did the Klaxons one and it will be out soon along with remixes for Alvin Risk and Chiddy Bang.

Your DATAMIX series is incredibly popular and impressively long running. How do you choose tracks to include in the mixes? Can we expect them to keep coming indefinitely?

Yeah, we’ll keep them coming. We just pick the latest songs that we like the most and when we have enough we just make the mix on the plane or something.

What is the dynamic like between the two of you when working in the studio? How about while performing?

I do most of the producing and engineering, but we both write the songs and we both DJ when Theo is available. When he is not, I just DJ by myself.

Being signed to Ultra Records is a pretty big deal in the electronic music world. Artist/label relationships can sometimes be complicated though, so what have your experiences with Ultra been like so far?

They are great. We are a bit left field for there normal sound, but they sent us a big pay check so we are happy.

The electronic music scene is undeniably changing very quickly. Where do you see it a year from now?

Hopefully in a better direction haha. I want it all to sound like Thrill Kill Kult!

The video for “Through the Prism” is insane. What was your level of involvement in the making of that?

I said, “Let’s get some people together and go to the country and party and film it.” It was really wild and we had to cut a lot of footage stuff.

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